


Still Take You Home

by jolly_utter



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Office, Enemies to Friends, M/M, Neptune is impossible to photograph, Trapped In Elevator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:40:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21664618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolly_utter/pseuds/jolly_utter
Summary: Some said it was shoddy construction and some said the old building was haunted, but everyone agreed that the lift had a mind of its own. Francis’s pal Tom Blanky in accounting had developed an uncanny understanding of the thing. He’d press the button and listen to its sounds and announce,“Clear sailing today,” or, “not a chance of it shifting now, better take the stairs, lads.”Written for my Terror Bingo square 'trapped in an elevator'
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames, John Bridgens/Harry Peglar (referenced)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 123
Collections: The Terror Bingo (2019)





	Still Take You Home

**Author's Note:**

> I needed a break from my ridiculous epic threesome fix-it, coming soon to an Ao3 near you, so I banged out this bit of fun fandom cliche. Enjoy!
> 
> Title is from the Arctic Monkeys song.
> 
> _Well, it's ever so funny  
>  'Cause I don't think you're special, I don't think you're cool  
> You're just probably alright  
> But under these lights you look beautiful_

The Northwest Passage startup was housed on the top floor of a converted industrial building. The conversion had been done cheaply, so the walls were draughty and the thermostat permanently broken, but at least the rent was low. Some said it was shoddy construction and some said the old building was haunted, but everyone agreed that the lift had a mind of its own. Francis’s pal Tom Blanky in accounting had developed an uncanny understanding of the thing. He’d press the button and listen to its sounds and announce,

“Clear sailing today,” or, “not a chance of it shifting now, better take the stairs, lads.”

John Franklin, the CEO, was more inclined to listen to blind optimism than Blanky’s advice, and wasn’t that just his leadership style in a nutshell? As a result, he once got trapped in the lift for so long that, word was, he started to seriously contemplate his expensive Italian leather shoes as a snack. 

Francis Crozier, his dour and cynical second in command, wasn’t one to take risks and generally avoided the lift altogether. He was wearily heading for the stairs at the end of a particularly frustrating week when an arm beckoned him from the lift, holding open the door.

“Get in, I’m heading down!”

Too tired to argue, he changed course and the door clanged shut behind him. He looked up to see who he was sharing the lift with and his heart sank. James bloody Fitzjames. Looking neatly pressed and impeccably coiffed even at the end of the work day, and smiling as if he’d done him a favour. Bloody goddamn fucking ponce. Francis grunted a thank you as the ancient cables and gears creaked into motion. With any luck he was in for a few minutes’ awkward silence and then he’d be free to head home, where whiskey and his dog and not thinking about work for twelve blissful hours awaited him. 

Luck, it seemed, was against Francis. Again.

The lift slowed far too soon, shuddering ominously. A heart-stopping pause, an unsettling clang from somewhere above, a drop of a few feet in which Francis felt an odd sense of relief at what he thought was his imminent death, and then they stopped, grinding to a halt with a sense of finality. Stuck in the lift with James Fitzjames, as if his day couldn’t get any fucking worse.

Francis employed his extensive vocabulary of profanity, and James banged on the door with both fists, as if that was going to help.

“Pretty sure this thing is lined with lead,” Francis pointed out complacently. “No one’s going to hear us.”

“Well isn’t it just like you to give up before we’ve even tried?” James snapped.

“What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Only that you shoot down John’s plans with dire predictions of failure at every possible opportunity.”

“Look, he means well but he doesn’t have a head for business and I think you’re smart enough to see that, even though you’re a fucking brown-noser.”

“Talk about a backhanded compliment.”

James sounded more tired than angry, and Francis felt safe giving full vent to his frustrations. Despite James having a couple inches on him, he was pretty confident he could get the first punch in if it came to that. James’s next comment rather took the wind out of his sails, however.

“As we’re stuck here for the foreseeable future, maybe we can clear the air a bit. I know you’ve disliked me from the start, and if it’s just a personality thing, there’s not much I can do, but if I’ve actually done something to piss you off I’d rather you told me.”

Francis opened his mouth to say something about James being an insufferable prat, then reconsidered and shut it again. It had been a long day and the fight was going out of him. He just wanted to go home. Francis coughed awkwardly and tried again.

“It’s not really you. Mostly. It’s just that the first I heard of you, when we were getting going, you’d been put in charge of hiring over my head, as well as put to work on my area of expertise. Can you blame me for disliking you?”

James looked like he was giving the question honest thought.

“I suppose not. But you might have given me a second chance sometime in the two years we’ve been working together. None of that was my decision, and I respect your knowledge a great deal. I honestly think we’d work well together if you could find it in your heart to hate me a bit less.”

Francis was used to James talking himself up incessantly and sucking up to John Franklin even when he was clearly being a well-intentioned idiot. This actually sounded real, and it was a pleasant surprise.

“Tell you what,” Francis said, “I’ll have a go at not hating you if you drop the business school bullshit and give your honest opinion more often. It suits you much better.”

“Deal.”

The smile James gave him was also surprisingly open and vulnerable, and Francis felt a twinge of foreboding about this whole plan. If he started liking Fitzjames as a person there was a not inconsiderable danger that he would start to fancy him, and Francis fancying people did not tend to end well. He’d suffered through years of pining for James Ross at his previous company, not being willing to risk their friendship or their successful business partnership for the sake of a crush. With Sophia he’d made his mind up not to make the same mistake again, came out guns blazing and heart on his sleeve. That had landed him, somehow, with both a broken heart and a position in her uncle’s slowly failing startup, and by extension, in his current situation stuck in a lift with yet another unattainably attractive and confident person. Francis very much wanted a drink.

While Francis was brooding, James had been exploring the narrow confines of the lift and waving his phone around, seeing if there was any obscure corner in which he could get a signal. He let out a grunt of frustration as he jumped against the corner by the door, like a housecat after an out-of-reach fly.

“What the hell are you doing?” Francis asked mildly.

“I think—ugh—I can almost get a signal up here but I can’t hold my phone in place long enough to send a—dammit—send a message. If Bridgens is still here maybe he can get help.”

“Won’t he and Henry have gone home by now?”

Probably to drink wine and read classic literature by candlelight or whatever adorable shit they got up to. The relationship between James’s PA and Peglar from IT was an open secret at this point, and as office romances went it was almost sickeningly sweet. They were both so damn nice and happy together that Francis couldn’t even find it in his heart to be bitter about them.

“Well I have to try! Are you going to do something helpful or am I going to have to reconsider our truce?”

Francis sighed in the face of this blatant emotional manipulation.

“God, what do you want? A boost?”

James looked at him like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and then they had to wrangle the least undignified way of getting a grown man up to reach the ceiling of an elevator. They ended up chucking their suit jackets on the floor and then James put his hands on Francis’s shoulders and Francis put his hands on James’s waist. James jumped and Francis lifted and leaned forward and braced his knee, and there they were: James with his long legs wrapped around Francis, his back against the cold metal wall and his phone held aloft, Francis’s hands worryingly close to James’s ass as he supported him.

“Damn.” James seemed slightly at a loss for a moment. “That’s. Well.”

“Do you have a signal?” Francis gritted out. “My back isn’t going to take this for long.” Never mind his back, his sanity wasn’t going to take much of feeling James’s muscles flexing under his hands and against his sides.

“Yes. Yes! We did it!” James laughed triumphantly. “Message sent!”

“Why don’t you just send a company-wide message? Increase the chances that someone will see it?”

James suddenly looked shifty.

“You don’t want everyone to know you got stuck in the lift!” Francis crowed. Perhaps ill-advisedly, he tried to reach for the phone. “Bugger your pride, just send the damn message so we can get out of here!”

James tried to wriggle away, despite having a great advantage in height and momentarily forgetting that he was wrapped around Francis. He lost his balance and had to steady himself with his arms around Francis’s shoulders, looking down at him near and breathless and flustered. Francis’s hands were now fully cupping James’s ass in an effort to keep him from falling. They stared at each other for a long minute, forgetting about the phone and attempts at rescue and, in fact, anything that either of them had been saying. Francis abruptly let go and James collapsed against the wall, steadying himself and finding his feet again. Francis stepped back.

“Sorry, arms gave out,” he said, looking away.

James ran a hand through his hair and tried to steady his breathing.

“Fine, I don’t want the entire company to know I was a lazy idiot and ignored what the lift whisperer Blanky said this morning. I was meant to go to the gym with Dundy and I couldn’t even be bothered to take the bloody stairs.”

“Surely he’ll notice if you don’t turn up?” Francis asked, slumping tiredly against the opposite wall. James collapsed opposite him, managing to merely look elegantly rumpled while sprawled on the dusty floor of a lift.

“Pretty sure I could be dead for several weeks before Dundy noticed anything was wrong. I love the man but he’s got biscuits for brains.”

“He’s your best mate?” Francis said incredulously. “Spends half the day hanging around your desk chatting?”

James looked him in the eye, deadpan serious.

“Weeks.”

Francis let out a silent chuckle that bubbled over into a proper laugh, and James’s eyes wrinkled up at the corners and then they were both laughing uncontrollably. Francis finally wheezed to a stop, wiping his eyes.

“You’re quite good company when you’re not being a posh wanker,” he said.

“You should smile more instead of constantly looking like you’ve swallowed a lemon,” James replied good-naturedly. “You’re not actually bad looking, you know?”

“You’re one to talk about backhanded compliments.”

James shrugged, conceding the point.

“Will anyone notice if you don’t show up tonight?” He asked.

Francis gave a rueful smile.

“My dog won’t be pleased but as long as my batshit neighbour Hickey down the hall doesn’t decide to break in and eat him, he’ll be fine.”

“Aww, you have a dog?” James asked, ignoring everything else that Francis had matter-of-factly said, as if it were a normal concern. “Have you got a photo?”

Francis fished his phone out of his pocket and poked at it, frowning. James scooted around beside him and caught a glimpse of a 5% battery and 14 unread messages that gave him palpitations, before Francis pulled up a photo and held the phone out to him. James tilted the screen, then tried holding it further away to see if it helped. The picture was dark and grainy, maybe showing a corner of floor with a darker mass on it.

“Your dog’s black, then.” James said, vainly trying to zoom in.

“Mm. Newfoundland.”

“Honey, you have _got_ to learn how to use filters.”

Francis looked at James with an incredulously raised eyebrow as James handed the phone back. James abruptly realised he had slipped into Insta gay mode, which he didn’t normally do at work.

“Don’t give me that millennial crap,” Francis said, taking his phone somewhat defensively. James tipped his head back with a dramatic sigh.

“It’s useful, honestly. Here.” He pulled out his own phone and snapped a selfie of the two of them, James grinning and Francis still looking judgemental. “Now even in this, I must say, rather unflattering lighting we can still make some improvements…” James demonstrated how to adjust the brightness and contrast, and looked gratified when Francis gave a grunt of grudging interest.

“Is that how you make your photos all look so good, then?” Francis asked, unguarded, then clamped his mouth shut thirty seconds too late. James rounded on him with alarming focus.

“What photos?” He asked. He dipped his head, trying to look Francis in the face as Francis studiously avoided meeting his eyes. “Have you been looking at my Instagram, Francis?” 

That amount of smug glee should be outlawed, Francis thought.

“No!” Even Francis could tell that he sounded far too defensive. “Blanky showed me once, for a laugh,” he added, trying to sound casual.

“And did you like what you saw?” James’s voice was suddenly far too close.

“You should really wear a shirt more often. You’ll freeze to death if you’re not careful.”

“Hmm, I’ll keep that in mind.”

Francis risked a glance sideways, to see James leaning on one arm, still leaning in too close, still too attractive even in the fluorescent lights without any filter. Could James be flirting with him? No. People like James Fitzjames didn’t flirt with people like Francis Crozier, except maybe to throw him off balance and get him to show his interest and then give James something to laugh about with his pals Dundy and Graeme on Monday morning. 

“You’re looking a bit pink, actually,” James went on. “You sure you aren’t getting overheated?”

“In this building?” Francis scoffed. “Not bloody likely.”

“You’re not _blushing_ , are you?” James asked teasingly.

“Look.” Francis snapped, patience gone. “You’ve got enough things to make fun of me for, can you maybe keep ‘sad old gay’ off the list?”

James went still for a minute, then he shifted around to face him, putting his hand on Francis’s leg.

“Shit. Shit, Francis, I wasn’t trying to—I’m sorry.” He sounded, and looked, when Francis risked a glance up, genuinely contrite. “You want to talk sad old gays? The Instagram is all- it’s just vanity.” He waved a hand dismissively. “I haven’t had a relationship that lasted more than a few months for almost a decade. I’ve got daddy issues like you wouldn’t believe- in fact my therapist says that’s why I’m so bad at disagreeing with John even when I know he’s being an idiot. So there’s that.” 

James ran out of steam and looked away, his brow furrowed. Francis found himself covering James’s hand with his own, smiling in reassurance as James suddenly seemed to be the one in need of it.

“It’s all right,” Francis said gently. “I’m a sad old bisexual, anyway.”

That got a surprised laugh out of James, and the hint of a smile. Neither of them had moved their hands. James hesitantly shifted his thumb in an infinitesimal caress and did the very attractive thing where he bit the inside of his lip. 

“Since I seem to have reached my time limit being in a confined space without massively oversharing—” Francis raised an eyebrow to inquire whether James had ever felt any compunction about talking about himself, which James resolutely ignored “—if I were to tell you that I’ve fancied you from the moment you first scowled at me, would you be more likely to admit that you were blushing just now?”

“I don’t know, is that the sort of thing you’re likely to say?” 

Apparently the only part of Francis’s brain still working was the corner that made _Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_ references at inopportune moments. Who knew?

“Well, you have been telling me to be more honest…”

James drew his hand away, only in order to crawl up between Francis’s sprawled legs, on the filthy floor of a stuck lift. It was quite possibly the sexiest thing Francis had ever seen. Then James’s lips brushed his, and Francis’s eyes closed entirely of their own accord and he leaned forward, chasing that touch. He felt James’s soft laugh as a breath against his lips and then they were on his again, firmer this time. Francis opened his mouth and James crowded up against him. His hands were cupping Francis’s face gently, drawing him in, and then Francis had a hand in James’s thick hair and another grabbing that beautiful ass. James straddled his lap, letting Francis pull him close as their lips and tongues met again and again.

“If this isn’t the most cliché thing that’s ever happened to me,” James murmured, nuzzling his face against Francis’s beard.

Francis was overwhelmed by the scent of James’s aftershave and the sound of his voice so close to his ear. He let his head fall back and he brushed a kiss against James’s cheekbone.

“My only consolation is that if you try to turn this into one of your damned stories, that will require you to admit to getting stuck in here in the first place.”

“Might be worth it…”

There was nothing for it but to pull James’s irritatingly clever mouth close again and kiss the grin off his lips.

Francis scarcely heard the clank of gears over the hungry noises James was making against his mouth, and he was quite ready to attribute the vertiginous drop to all the blood in his body migrating towards his lap. James pulled back slightly, and then they both realised they were in motion again and scrambled awkwardly to their feet.

James let out of triumphant cheer and pulled Francis in for a sloppy celebratory kiss, and then the lift shuddered to a stop on what felt like solid ground at last. James scooped up their discarded jackets and handed Francis his rumpled tweed one as the doors rattled open, and they both blinked against the brighter light of the building’s lobby. Together, they staggered out, and Francis was immediately swept into a tight hug.

“You survived!” Blanky exclaimed. “We thought for sure you would have resorted to cannibalism before the rescue party arrived!”

“It was a close thing,” Francis muttered, attempting to glare at James and accidentally smiling instead. “How did you manage it?”

“Well, young Hartnell here noticed your cars were still in the lot, and that the lift wasn’t working. Good eyes, this one.”

Blanky indicated the IT technician standing awkwardly to the side, and Francis reached out to shake his hand.

“Well done, lad. Now, if everyone in the office didn’t share the same three first names, we wouldn’t have to go by last names like a bunch of private school twats. Maybe you should have thought of that when you were doing the hiring, _Fitzjames_.”

“There’s always middle names, _Moira_ ,” James said with a broad smile, before thanking Hartnell and Blanky himself. Francis scowled silently. 

“Anyway,” Blanky continued, “he let me know that you seemed to be stuck, and I worked my magic, had a chat with the spirits of the lift, and here we are.”

“He phoned the mechanic,” Hartnell added in a stage whisper.

“Don’t worry, I won’t say anything to detract from your mystique,” Francis said, clapping Blanky on the shoulder. “And now I’d better get home, or Neptune will never speak to me again.”

They all said their goodnights and parted ways, James and Francis with an awkward handshake and a “See you on Monday” in front of the others. However, Francis saw Blanky’s knowing glance between the two of them, and specifically at James’s dusty knees, and he doubted he would be able to keep his old friend in the dark for long.

Francis’s phone dinged as he got in his car, and with the last of his battery he saw that James had sent the photo of the two of them in the lift, and the message, _well that was unexpectedly pleasant, but maybe dinner next time?_

Francis smiled, glancing across the dark car park to where the lights of James’s car still shone. _You doing anything tomorrow night?_ he replied.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm [@anadequatesir](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/anadequatesir) on tumblr, come say hi!


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